


frostbite

by ang3lba3



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Cuddle for Warmth, Edward Elric Goes to College, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Post-Promised Day, Suicidal Thoughts, Trans Edward Elric, background Al/Win
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 16:53:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20604125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ang3lba3/pseuds/ang3lba3
Summary: It's December. Edward Elric is 19 years old. He has a niece named Nina who is the best thing in the world. He has a statue honoring him in Central. He has no alchemy, no purpose, and a bucket list.He should have expected that even a moment of Roy Mustang's time is long enough for Roy Mustang to fuck up the entire plan.





	frostbite

It’s December, and Ed is cold, and Alphonse is inside the Rockbell-Elric’s nice warm home, and Edward wishes he was wrapped up in front of the fire beside him.

Instead he’s standing in front of a statue in Central’s Central Park, and considering destroying it for about the billionth time since it’s been put up. Sure, anyone who knew him would know it was him who did it immediately, but…

In the statue, he’s twelve years old again, grinning like the fierce thing he hasn’t been since he gained an arm and lost the only thing that made him  _ worth something. _ Statue-Ed is holding a state alchemist pocket watch, twirling it on one finger in a nice case of delicate metalwork. His other hand is shoved into his pocket, and the red coat wrapped around him is made of bronze so it stands out against the gold leaf over the rest of the statue. 

He can’t destroy it, and when he looks at the plaque that says  _ The People’s Alchemist, Edward Elric, 1899- _ he thinks curiously about whether they’ll need to commission a new one after tonight, or if they’ll just make the adjustment while it’s still attached. He wonders who’s going to be the one who thinks of such a strange little detail needing to be taken care of, how long it will take.

Ed turns away from the statue, and heads towards the last stop he has planned. Earlier, he played with Elicia - she was getting so  _ big _ , came up to his chest now - and visited Mrs Hughes. Before he left for Central 

( _ are you sure I shouldn’t come, Brother?  _ ** _Al, don’t be a dumbass, Winry just had your goddamn spawn._ ** ) 

he’d held his niece and pressed kisses to her perfect face and perfect fingers, watched her sleep for hours. 

( _ I’m starting to think you like Nina more than you like me, Ed.  _ ** _Well, she’s definitely less nosy._ ** _ Ed! _ )

And now the air cuts in his throat, his lungs, and his automail aches. He’s been outside too long, Winry would kill him if she knew he hadn’t been inside since before it went dark on a day like this when the radios said things like  _ record lows _ and  _ dangerous wind chill _ . It doesn’t matter. He’s had worse, went to goddamn Briggs with worse automail than this, and he’s drawing close to his destination besides.

When he reaches the gate he pauses, struggling to open it with his frozen flesh hand before he gives up and uses the automail leg to kick it open. He’d wanted to maybe have a chance of not being incredibly loud, of maintaining what little surprise that could be expected in an encounter with his old C.O.

The door isn’t opening by the time that he gets to it, and he waits just a moment more before knocking, just until that moment where the part of him that  _ knows _ can sense his target behind it.

He raps once, twice, waits and watches his breath leave in wispy white trails from his mouth. It reminds him of Havoc, just for a second, and when Mustang opens the door Ed is half smiling.

“Fullmetal?” Mustang says, and Ed doesn’t answer, just pushes past the man and into the threshold. His entire body shivers at the change in temperature, and his breath out is more violent than he’d expected it to be. It doesn’t reach him beyond that, his body still mostly numb. 

Edward hums absently behind the scarf he’d used to protect his mouth and nose as a response. He pulls it down as he makes his way down the hall to Mustang’s living room. Mustang follows, like a confused pet dog (pony?), and it makes Edward’s smile grow, just a little more. 

When Edward reaches to build a fire, Mustang beats him to it, a snap of his fingers and…

Edward tries to not look as envious as he feels. He’s had plenty of practice, but he keeps his face turned away for a moment just in case.

Then he allows himself to turn, to take Mustang in, to catalog the way the years had changed him. 

“You’re going gray,” he remarks, and it comes out unfortunately soft.

Mustang’s face is curved into a concerned frown, apparently too tired or too… something… to keep his blank smirk on. Age has lined his face in ways that it hadn’t been before, even though it’s only been four goddamn years. Or maybe it had just been the Promised Day that aged him. God knew it had aged Edward, if not quite as visibly at first. 

“Edward?” Mustang asks, and another shiver rips through him. He turns to the fire and pretends it was from the lingering cold.

“Your house hasn’t changed much. I’d actually expected you to move, now that you aren’t a lowly Colonel.”

A hand reaches out, catches around Edward’s wrist, the thin strip of skin between his too-thin coat and soaked-through gloves. Edward can’t pretend the shiver isn’t from that, this time, but he  _ can _ refuse to look his former C.O. in the eyes when he does it. 

“Fullmetal.” 

And there’s the C.O. voice, right on time. Edward’s smile becomes a full fledged grin, and he finally has the confidence to look up into Mustang’s face (although not as far up these days, really). He’s back on familiar ground.

“I won’t be long,” Edward says, and shifts until they face each other, Mustang’s hand inexplicably still touching his wrist. Edward doesn’t question it, even though the warmth verges on pain to his frozen skin. “I just need one thing and then I’m out of your hair.”

“What could you possibly need from me?” Roy asks, dropping the commander voice, back into confusion. Edward’s grin loses some traction at the softness in the eyes before him, the complete lack of scheming or demand.

He didn’t come here for Roy, in plaid pajama bottoms and a tank top with a hole in the stomach from overuse. He came for the Colonel, or Mustang. But then, he’d been the one who decided to come this late, too impatient to shell out for a hotel room and wait for the morning, too concerned that Mustang might beat him out of the house and he’d have to wait even _longer. _That he might lose his nerve when his nerve is all that’s left of the him Mustang knows. He was the one who decided who to come when Roy was too tired to put up the ever present shields that sat behind every one of their reactions.

“Nothing much,” Edward says, rallying in the face of unexpected humanity. 

He pulls the glove from the hand not _(_ _ still _ _)_ trapped by Mustang off with his teeth and lets it drop to the floor. His skin was damp and cold, true, but not as bad as the cloth.

Mustang still flinches from the cold when Edward places his hand on the back of his neck, but he flinches  _ towards  _ Edward, and Edward presses his lips to Mustang’s and—

There’s nothing more than a sense of pressure, details cut from him with how numb he is from the cold, but it’s… it’s still worth it. It’s breaking him open and he feels like he’s about to scream and it hurts, but in the best way anything has hurt in a long time. Maybe ever.

It doesn’t go on long, just a moment of stunned stillness before Roy stumbles away, but it’s enough. 

Ed can feel himself crying, hot streaks that don’t make sense until he tastes the salt and grasps the context. 

“There,” he whispers, and tugs himself free from where Roy’s grip had become painfully tight. “Told you it wouldn’t take long.”

And then he heads for the door, ignoring the throbbing in his lips, the throbbing in his heart, the throbbing in his stump, the glove left in a sad little puddle on the hardwood. Ignores the way Roy calls after him with emotions he can’t identify in his voice. 

He’s halfway through it when Roy catches up with him, gripping his shoulder and pulling him back through the threshold, slamming the door closed and putting himself bodily between Ed and the exit. There’s a look on his face, intense and burning and it lights up Ed’s skin with what he could have sworn was  _ literal  _ electricity, if he didn’t know better. If he didn’t know what literal electricity felt like.

He looks  _ pissed.  _

Ed sighs in relief, because that’s not Roy anymore, that’s Mustang, and without entirely meaning to he breathes,  _ “yeah, that’s more like it.” _

“You’re going to kill yourself,” Mustang says, bluntly, and something about hearing his intentions spoken makes them…

He winces back from the truth of the statement, doesn’t bother to ask how the other man knows. It’s written on every line of his body, and Gracia had looked at him thin mouthed and concerned, like she suspected but wasn’t sure, and Al and Winry saw what they wanted without Pinako there to see the truth and beat it out of him, and Mustang—

Well, actually, Mustang probably knew him better than Winry. They’d certainly seen each other more often over those crucial years, even if she’d seen him  _ far  _ more in the years since. Making someone breakfast in the morning in your shared kitchen was intimate, but it couldn’t match seeing someone bleed out, knowing that you were the only reason they were bleeding in the first place.

“Goddamnit, Fullmetal,” Mustang said when Ed didn’t answer, and shoved him, hard. Ed hit against the wall as his poor, abused legs finally crumpled out from under him, and he barely caught himself on the little… end table, or whatever the fuck it was, he didn’t know what you called that shit when it was in the middle of the hall and not at the goddamn end of anything. 

Ed stood, wobbling, hands bracing him on the end table, and tried to manage up a glare, but it was hard when his eyes were still streaming. 

“You’re nineteen fucking years old,” Mustang snarled, and Ed wasn’t sure he’d actually ever heard Mustang drop the f-bomb, so he was completely excused for the way that deep growled curse made his legs give out for good. 

Ed cracked his head on the end table on the way down, letting out a sharp yelp, curled over to cradle the sore spot in his frozen hands, less concerned than he should be probably when they found it slick and warm. The smell of blood was next, and he sighed expressively.

“Eugh,” he moaned.

“I swear to fucking—” Mustang said, and before Ed could respond or Mustang could finish that bitten out sentence he was being pulled to his feet. “If you think I’m filling out the paperwork for a national hero freezing to death in the entryway of the  _ Flame Alchemist— _ ”

“Where you takin’ me?” Ed asked, and his legs could barely move, he was so weak, not a concussion but still so  _ weak,  _ and he shouldn’t be hanging around the Col- General’s house when he was going to throw himself in the river and hope drowning wasn’t as bad a way to go as freezing, but Mustang was  _ touching him _

_ hands on his shoulders, fingers thin and long and strong, Ed wishes they could bruise their fingerprints right into his skin, legs almost bracketing his because he’s close to the wall and Mustang is  _ ** _closer,_ ** _ _

“Guess,” Mustang said, and then he was lifting Ed into a bridal carry, like he was some kind of fucking— _ damsel— _ and it wasn’t the association with women that he resented so much as it was the way its association with  _ helplessness  _ and  _ protection _ made his stomach and pelvis clench down expectantly.

They headed up the stairs, and Ed was too busy trying to breathe with a runny nose and Mustang’s body on his body to guess where the fuck he was being taken. The bedroom, some dumb part of him hoped. Sex sounded—well, it didn’t sound fuckin’ great, but it sounded like something to take him outta his head for a while. Besides, he was gonna  _ die  _ soon. He shouldn’t have to go to the grave with this many secrets  _ and  _ his virginity.

Mustang was breathing hard by the time they reached the cracked door, because automail was a heavy bitch even when on someone as… normally-sized… as Ed.

He kicked the door open, and Ed saw a bedroom.

Okay, well, he hadn’t exactly been expecting  _ that,  _ for all his thoughts about virginity _ - _

Mustang plopped him on the bed, but when Ed met his eyes he replaced the name with Roy. Roy’s forehead was crinkled tight with concern, and his lips pressed thin.

Then he started pulling Ed’s clothes off.

“Woah, there, stallion,” Ed said, not exactly trying to struggle away from Roy’s hands as they stripped him of his jacket, but not exactly helping either. “You ever heard of foreplay?” 

It was ridiculous that he’d been okay with sex a second ago and now Roy was trying to get him out of his clothes and he was  _ complaining.  _ Fuckin’ hypocrite, that’s what he was.

_ “ You’re freezing to death.  _ You will be lucky if you don’t lose your extremities,” Roy said with a clearly exasperated tone. “Your clothes are soaked with snow and obviously you’re delirious.”

Ed’s face flushed as Roy started down the buttons of his over shirt, and he stared at the ceiling, because Roy was apparently determined to treat him for hypothermia, and Ed was wondering if divine punishment existed. Because if it ever had, it was surely in the form of his childhood crush undressing him efficiently and with all the sexual desire of a parent. He’d just meant to have one last fantasy come true, and of course, of  _ course  _ trying to do something for himself like that would backfire this badly.

He’d managed to hit on Roy twice in half an hour, and be not rejected—it should have been a win. Yet somehow, the attempts being absolutely ignored was worse.

Roy didn’t say anything about the scars once the undershirt came off, the ones from battle wounds and the ones from surgery, which Ed was glad of. He probably thought that the mastectomy scars were just old wounds, actually. He didn’t say anything about the clearly self inflicted scars and scabs littering his arms, either.

“Boxers stay on,” Ed said with an edge of panic as Roy started on his boots, but didn’t have it in him to fight if Roy stripped them off. Fuck, if he had to deal with coming out to Roy right now he’d probably throw himself out of a window. Which would be unfortunate for many reasons, not least of which that he’d probably survive. 

“Take them off when you’re under the blankets,” Roy said after a brief pause like he was seriously considering taking them off anyways. It made Ed shiver in a not-entirely-bad way.

When the pants came off, he couldn’t help but stop staring at the ceiling. Roy’s head was turned down, focusing on undoing the zipper and button and  _ fuck  _ Ed thought freezing to death would make his hormones chill out but—

_ that’s his hair, his hair so soft and sleep tousled and his hands sliding my trousers off, shit he’s still wearing his gloves and the flint cloth is scraping down my thighs and my calves and _

“Get under the blankets,” Roy said, pushing Ed’s pants to the side like Ed wasn’t having a heart attack.

Ed glanced down at his own dick, forgetting for just a second like he  _ always did  _ that he didn’t have the right equipment to worry about getting an awkward boner. Instead he just saw that his packer was kind of lopsided and starting to fall out.

He moved under the blankets as fast as his cold deadened limbs would let him.

It was—shit, it was soft, and it smelled like the Colonel. Burying his face in a pillow made him think of all those thousands of fantasies, of pressing his face into the couch to look petulant when really he was breathing in the smell of a lazy Colonel who napped too much and had to make up his work late in the night. Of the way his heart pounded when he stood too close during an argument, part anger part violence part uncontrollable hormones.

As Roy said—something, Ed really wasn’t paying attention—Ed closed his eyes and just sort of… started to drift. His body was cold and hot with pins and needles all over, but the sensations seemed distant now, secondary to the numbness and exhaustion that filled him. His automail was painful anywhere it touched him so he spread his legs wide, and he considered taking it off for just a second, but when he tried to move his hands he got no response and he didn’t really care to keep trying.

He floated like that for a while, although he couldn’t begin to guess how long. The smell of the pillow stopped meaning anything, and vague maybe-dreams filled his head about the Colonel and Mustang and Roy and all the differences between three people who were ostensibly the same one. The holy trinity of childhood crushes.

“Edward,” a soft voice said, and there was the clink of ceramic hitting wood, and then the pressure of a body sliding under the blankets with him. Ed tried to open his eyes, grateful that he’d already had his head in that direction and didn’t need to move more than that.

“Wut,” he said, talking to a blur of pale flesh and dark hair.

“You need to sit up, okay?” hands started pulling him to sitting, and Ed groaned, but didn’t manage to fight it. “You need to drink something warm.”

“Need to  _ sleep,”  _ Ed argued, but let himself be jostled upwards. The blankets slid down to his hips and he whined.

“You didn’t take off your—of course you didn’t,” the voice said. It sounded annoyed, with a worried edge. It reminded him of Winry, but distinctly  _ not  _ Winry. “Ed, you have to take off your boxers.”

Ed groaned and let his head flop back against the wall. Yes, they were cold and heavy and he was pretty sure his pelvis was going to fall off anytime now and he’d finally get the automail dick he’d always wanted but—

Why couldn’t he?

He managed to make his brain focus long enough to remember. Someone… he was around someone he wasn’t out to, who he couldn’t let know. 

“Rather die,” Ed said.

“Yes, that is why you’re here,” Mustang said dryly, and  _ oh, oh,— _

His dumb memories came back in a rush, and Ed managed to make his hands work enough to pull the blanket up to his belly button, eyes still fighting to focus. Shit, he shoulda gotten glasses like Al and Winry kept pestering him to. He was useless seeing when he was this tired. 

“Just, gimme a sec,” he said, and started working them off with his hands and then his flesh leg. The real danger to him right now was probably more the automail than some wet boxers, but Ed really rather would die than be naked in someone’s bed he wasn’t out to with one leg.

Finally, they were kicked to the bottom of the bed, and Ed said, “Ta fuckin da you pervert.”

Roy rolled his eyes and scooted closer. Ed tried to scoot away, but wasn’t fast enough, and then Roy’s hip was pressing against his. It took him a second to notice that it was cloth against skin, and that Roy had settled one blanket above him. Given him a layer of privacy.

It was so thoughtful it almost made Ed tear up before it hit him it was probably because Roy didn’t want to touch him, and then he almost teared up for that even dumber reason.

“Drink this tea,” Roy ordered, pulling the thing he’d put on the nightstand earlier over. It was, in fact, a very large cup of tea. More a pint glass, really. And it was steaming hot.

“Eugh,” Ed said, and Roy’s face sharpened to Mustang’s once again, so he drank the goddamn tea.

***

As Ed’s body thawed, he expected to be less exhausted, not  _ more,  _ and he fell into a weird sort of doze that never fully let him be awake. It was categorically unfair that he should miss any second of Roy hand feeding him hot drinks and rubbing the life back into his body, but, well, 

life wasn’t fair. 

When he woke up he wouldn’t be able to tell the fantasy from the reality, whether Roy’s hands really did press his hair back from his face and neck so could press a chaste kiss to Edward’s forehead, whether Roy laughed in his face and mocked him for thinking he would ever have a chance with him of  _ all people, _ whether Roy curled around him like a dumb puppy and got the back of Ed’s neck wet with tears. 

***

Ed wakes up warm, and he luxuriates in the sensation.

There’s sunlight on his eyelids, and he knows that means he slept too late again and Winry is going to be at his door any second to rip his blankets off and his curtain open all the way like the evil gearhead she is. But she hasn’t done it yet, so he might as well stay where he is.

He can never seem to get warm enough these days. Maybe it’s the depression, or the PTSD, but he dresses in more layers than anyone else he knows and curls up into a ball under five blankets. In the summer, it’s almost bearable, but now, in the winter—

There’s a heavy weight covering part of his arm and his chest, and another over his thigh. It takes him a minute to place it as another person’s body, and he sighs. The nightmares must have been bad, if Al came in to sleep with him. Maybe that was why Winry was letting him sleep in, if they’d been up late with his dumb night terrors.

Getting up meant facing another round of  _ see a doctor _ subtext and pleading eyes, but it also meant getting to see Nina and  _ eating.  _ His stomach grumbled at the thought, and he smiled. He could probably sneak out of the bed and make breakfast as a silent apology. Al was a heavy enough sleeper for him to get out as long as he was careful.

Ed opened his eyes, staring at the white sheets and making a tactical retreat as he slid as carefully as possible from under the limbs trapping him. He was just at the edge of the bed, slipping from under the blankets, when he realized several things.

  * This was not the flooring in _any _room of Ed’s house.

  * This was too big to be Ed’s bed, and he did not have white sheets.

  * He was butt naked. 

  * The limbs that had been over him were too long to have been Al’s.

Edward hissed in shock, entire body freezing with dread. What had he  _ done?  _ He couldn’t remember  _ anything. _ The entire night before was blacked out in the way that only happened when his brain was trying to protect him from something  _ awful.  _ He would cut his own arm off again to not have to deal with that particular symptom, but here he was, and he couldn’t remember where he was or what he’d -  _ who  _ he’d  _ done - _

“Good morning, Edward,” a male voice said behind him, raspy, cut off halfway through by a yawn that warped Ed’s name confusingly.

Ed pulled himself to sitting to turn and look at the speaker, body braced for the worst—what had he  _ done— _ and promptly fell out of the bed upon seeing Roy Motherfucking Mustang.

A sheet wrapped around him as he went, trapping him in an uncomfortable and ridiculous position, but also hiding his crotch. 

Although, maybe he didn’t  _ need  _ to hide his crotch.

The fall and subsequent sheet stealing actually jerked Roy several inches closer, his face comically surprised as he stared down at Ed. 

“Ed?” he asked, hesitantly.

“What did—” Ed wrapped his arms around his stomach, hunching over protectively, tangled hair slipping around his face in a curtain where it had escaped from his braid as he slept. “What did we.”

Roy furrowed his brows. “You don’t remember?”

“Would I be asking otherwise!” Ed snapped, and punched a hand into the floor. The wood was comforting against his knuckles, scraping them open at the force of the blow. 

Most people would probably not have chosen the word comforting to go in that sentence. But that felt - real. This was real.

Roy swung his legs over the side of the bed and free of the blankets. They were completely clothed, plaid pajama pants that looked soft and warm and fleece.

_ Where the fuck are my fleece pjs, _ Ed thought resentfully, starting to shiver in the winter morning chill.

“You were… upset,” Roy said, and the twitch at the corner of the mouth gave away the understatement where nothing else did. “You knocked on my door in the middle of the night, half frozen to death, and I treated you for frostbite.”

“Huh.” Ed considered this story, and it felt right.

It felt like it was missing things.

“Alright,” he said, accepting it for now. “So give me a pair of fuckin pants.”

***

Breakfast was… weird.

Ed had the feeling that Roy thought he was on drugs, or drunk last night. Ed didn’t have the heart to break his illusion that it was a substance doing this to him, and not an innate flaw of his illness, of his body. Of whatever going through the Gate that many times does to a person.

They were unusually silent. Roy, staring at him steadily over the burned unseasoned eggs like he was looking for something he couldn’t find. Ed, face turned down at his plate and only tilting up when he took a gulp of coffee. He fidgeted in his clothes, which were mostly dry but smelled musty with travel-sweat and sharp with melted ice. He pushed away the memories they were trying to bring up, the pulsing red sign behind his eyes that insisted he was forgetting something crucial and humiliating. 

He ate his eggs. 

***

Ed walked himself to the door. Roy followed, a nervous squint to his face and body language that Ed wasn’t really fond of. He looked like he was working up the courage to say something, to ask about something. He looked like he was soft enough to curl up on and forget about everything, still in those stupid fucking pajamas. 

“Ed-” Roy starts, but it turns out to be unnecessary because Ed sees the glove on the floor while trying to avoid eye contact and it all comes back.

“OH MY FUCKSHIT,” Ed says, very loudly. He’s not sure where Roy was going with that sentence, and he hadn’t wanted to hear it before, and he  _ definitely _ doesn’t want to hear it now. “Ohhhhh my Gooooood.”

“…what?” Roy asks, clearly befuddled. Good. As long as Ed’s confusing him with his high pitched horrified exclamations, Roy can’t ask him what the fuck he thought he was doing last night showing up at  _ his former boss’ home, _ and  _ kissing him, _ and  _ collapsing from sheer lust at a forceful word _ -

“GOODBYE.” Edward says (squeaks), and heads for the door at just below a run. He can’t kill himself now, he’s completely lost the momentum, which means it would be an absolute waste to die of mortification in Mustang’s foyer. Guess he’ll have to go back to Resembool and be an uncle for a while until he can build up the self hatred again to just go through with it. 

***

It’s June by the time he’s in Central again. Edward tries not to think about December too much. When he arrived home it was to two letters. The first was a note that just said, “Your life isn’t meaningless, it’s different. You’ve got a perfectly fine leg. Get up and hop on it. - R” 

Edward told himself the R stood for Rose, ignored the way he couldn’t stop thinking about how Mustang flinched  _ towards _ the kiss, and opened the other letter. 

It was from a headhunter agency. They wanted him to write a biography, or a textbook, or speak at alchemical conferences, or accept the honorary doctorate from any of the Universities that had offered and teach. The strong implication was that he was wasting his talents and a military pension wasn’t forever for a state alchemist who came out of the service with  _ more  _ limbs than he came into it. 

Insulting, and he burned it, and he couldn’t believe Roy had handed out his address to people who would obviously use it to harass him into working for them, but he remembered the Roy Mustang who had grabbed a grieving prepubescent amputee by his collar and  _ shook _ him while yelling about sin and okay maybe he  _ could _ believe Roy had given out his address. Some part of him is offended that he didn’t get an actual literal shaking by the collar again. He’d certainly handed over enough sinful ammunition, haha,  _ oh God- _

It’s June by the time he’s in Central again. He didn’t sign on with the headhunting agency, fuck ‘em, he’s a living legend and he doesn’t need to give them 30% of his wages to promote him. He’s already got his own goddamn statue, that’s all the advertising he’ll ever need. He goes to Central University and scares the shit out of an admissions officer when he asks to audit a few classes. He turns down the fumbled job offer and insists that he’d rather just skulk around campus absorbing knowledge like a bottomfeeding sponge. 

He sits in on classes that he wouldn’t have cared about if he could still do alchemy. He learns about what the mind is, about what a soul is, about the science of ethics. He meets people who call themselves philosophers and seem to have endless questions that can’t be answered, and that ask a new series of questions once they  _ are _ answered. He learns about history, about the heartbeat of societies and cultures. He learns languages and then orders books that have very different perspectives on all these things. 

Edward doesn’t understand how these could be considered the  _ soft _ sciences. Is it the general lack of muscle tone in the professors and students? The complete absence of hard facts and scientific method? The way his head caves in like soft fruit when he sits in his shitty little apartment at night, trying to put it all together?

He goes on this way until another December. Another Christmas. Roy knows he’s in the city by now, he’s sure, but there hasn’t been another note by in the mail. Probably knows him well enough to know that he doesn’t need one, that he hadn’t really needed the last one. Somewhere back home he’s missed his niece’s first birthday, and Winry scolded him on the phone but there wasn’t force behind it. Ed’s pretty sure it’s because he spent the last half hour yelling into the phone about socioeconomics, and it’s far more life than she ever thought she’d hear from him again. 

It’s December. Ed’s been warm for months, and he’s still feeding the fire. He’s curled up warm in his one bedroom shit hole, eating Xingese out of a paper box and flipping through a biography on some dead woman who’d done less than him with more time. For once he’s not thinking,  _ that means I get to stop, I get to rest now _ . For once he’s not thinking stopping at all. 

There’s a rap at his door. The clock reads half past midnight - too late to be good news, too strange to get bad news in person in Central. Ed tests the weight of the biography and decides it’s probably enough to get him out of any situations that might arise. 

He opens the door. 

“Hi,” says Roy. He’s wearing his military uniform, but the snow dusting his shoulders and his hair has softened his parade rest into a shivering hunch. “My car broke down.”

Ed looks out at the road. There’s no car. 

“It broke down quite a while from here.” Roy looks like he’d be awkwardly shuffling his feet but doesn’t have the energy anymore, just an exhausted resignation. “Can I use your phone?”

“Yeah,” Ed says, and steps back so that Roy can walk in. He closes the door behind him.

Ed’s entryway isn’t nice. It’s barely an entryway, actually. There’s the welcome mat, which Roy scrapes his boots off on liberally, and then there’s the tile of the kitchen. Roy Mustang is standing in his kitchen on a cold December eve, freezing to death a little bit. 

If there’s a God - and Ed’s classes are highly divided on that one - then he’s got a sense of humor. 

Roy’s still standing there, struggling with his boots, and then he’s out of his boots and wincing as the snow crusted on his pant legs hits his bare skin. Then he’s just standing there, numbly, dumbly. 

“Who are you going to call in the middle of the night to give you a ride?” Ed asks. He assumes there’s someone.

“I might have. Lied. A bit.” Roy is shivering. Like, a lot, actually. Under the lights of the kitchen it’s becoming clear that the blueish tinge to his skin wasn’t just the porch light. 

Ed…isn’t sure what’s happening here. 

“You look cold,” he says critically, and starts moving to make some tea. His face flushes a bit, because he no longer feels like dying of mortification when he thinks about that night a year ago, but… he’s not exactly proud of it either. 

“You could warm me up?” Roy says, and wow - wow he is, Ed is turning around and he is  _ much _ closer than he should be. He’s gotten. Very close. 

“That’s. I’m making tea. That’s the plan.”

“I…” Roy licks his lips, visibly steeling himself. Ed can’t help but track the movement, and seeing Roy seeing him tracking it. Roy smiles, and it’s a little bit Mustang, but mostly it’s Roy. “I have an alternative suggestion.”

***

Afterward, lying in bed with Roy’s  _ still cold feet _ digging into his side, afterward, breathing hard and nerves sparking, Ed says-

“You didn’t have a car, did you.”

“No,” Roy murmurs. “I was just taking a walk, wondering when everything went wrong, and then I realized I knew. And I knew how to fix it.”

“You realized months ago, but you wanted the narrative elegance,” Ed corrects.

“You think I’m a lot smarter than I am.” Roy yawns, his jaw cracking with the movement. 

Ed rolls onto his side, and tosses an arm loosely over Roy’s bare waist. “Roy, if you think that was a compliment to your intelligence, you are  _ exactly _ as smart as I think you are.”

~ fin ~

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/cryingiscooltm)
> 
> man like - what do i even say about this fic? i started it when i was in a really bad place, and the working title was 'the ribbon on my wrist says do not open until christmas' for quite a long time. i worked on it again when i was in a slightly better place, and finished it when i'm in a pretty okay place. that's pretty much all there is to say, i guess. it's a pretty personal fic, in the way that writing Edward often is, and i hope that you like it. 
> 
> oh also sorry about any typos etc - this isn't beta read, and i dont have the energy to fix the minor formatting and grammar mistakes that happen when you write a couple k one shot over several years.


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